Discretion, ‘Respectability’ and Institutional Police Racism

Sir William Macpherson's report into the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence (Macpherson 1999) is a damning indictment of the conduct of this murder investigation from the moment that the first officers appeared at the scene to the management of the whole operation by officers of ve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological research online 1999-03, Vol.4 (1), p.175-183
Main Author: Waddington, P.A.J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Commissions
England
Great Britain
Homicide
Investigations (Law Enforcement)
Justice
London, England
Murder
Organizational Culture
Police
Police community relations
Race relations
Racial Relations
Racism
Social problems
Stephen Lawrence
United Kingdom
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Summary:Sir William Macpherson's report into the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence (Macpherson 1999) is a damning indictment of the conduct of this murder investigation from the moment that the first officers appeared at the scene to the management of the whole operation by officers of very senior rank. Its general impact arises from the Inquiry's acceptance and promulgation of a more thorough-going definition of the term "institutional racism" which caused enormous controversy during the course of the Inquiry and became the focus of attention after its publication. Whether or not the Inquiry was logically entitled to infer the existence of institutional racism from the details of a single case, however horrific, and whether that term was appropriately applied to individual instances of police conduct, is largely irrelevant. The inescapable political fact is that the routine actions of police officers have been authoritatively branded as racist. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:1360-7804
1360-7804
DOI:10.5153/sro.243